So tell me about the ‘almost’. What remaining reservations are preventing you from ‘renouncing truth and all it’s works’? I still want both you and SC. And with you onboard I could devote more attention to him.

Because I find the concept of truth, suitably qualified (e.g., in mathematics) to be valid. Also, I don’t think that all knowledge claims can be reduced to rational empiricism, at least as it is understood today. Going with Socrates (at least in Plato’s version) I think that whatever would pass for “truth” in a more metaphysical sense can’t be expressed in language, but can be experienced. As I see it, this points to a form of knowing that goes beyond rational empiricism (although based on personal experience) but which often cannot be taken beyond the personal. The theologian Robert Forward called this “knowing by identity,” that is, knowing a state by becoming identical with it. Having had an experience, non-conceptually, however, the tendency for people is to try and put it into some linguistic form thus limiting it and making it no longer “truth” (unless we’re talking about sudden flashes of illumination that can be tested by other methods). This means that whenever one has some sort of non-conceptual metaphysical type experience the first thing required is to test the realization arising from the experience against reason and empirical data. In cases where these tests can’t be carried out, it reduces to evaluation by effect on you. An example in this forum is Bruce Burleson, who at some point in his life had a personal experience which he interprets as an experience of Jesus. By putting a name on it, he confines himself to being a Christian (a delightful one, as it happens) and so has removed himself from the “truth” but retains a connection to it via the verbal linkage provided by the word “Jesus” as a pointer. So I can consider Bruce’s experience as valid—for him—because it appears to have produced beneficial effects in his life. That doesn’t make it valid for me, a point which Bruce, bless his heart, recognizes.

That being said, I do carry out many of the actions that you suggest, pointing out counter-examples to claims of absolute truth made in my presence (a habit I picked up from my dad), writing the occasional letter to newspapers, etc., emphasizing the importance of reason and experiment in my scientific reasoning course (rather than, as in most such courses, simply assuming it), and making relevant points in papers written for publication.

Again, what you seem to be understanding as my position is its antithesis. Science is constantly identified and explained throughout ‘Truth?’ as our only ultimately coherent form of knowledge. It is the one that can be seen to be grounded directly in reason, which can be seen to be grounded directly in our observations. Through reference to Point 1, we still can’t be justified in ascribing qualitative superiority to it.

If we continue to claim ‘privilege’ on grounds that we can’t finally coherently defend, then of course the theists will too.

I’d say that the main difference between my position (as outlined in ‘Truth?’), and yours and religions is that mine is as logically coherent and consistent as I can make it. I’ve taken the trouble to develop a single clear and linear basis for my selection of proposals as knowledge, and I’ve been engaged for many years now in raking back through the entire edifice to make it – through indicated additions and deletions – increasingly consistent with this.

From my side it’s the fully entrained logical corollary of an on-demand-repeatable physical observation. The observation is ‘Truth’s’ Point 1.

The first entry position for ‘woo woo’ was at Level 3. My explained meaning, from presentation of these levels as hierarchical, was/is that I will not embrace from any lower level any proposal that I can see to be logically excluded by those that I’m holding from a higher level.

Well, when would you embrace it then, keith? All I need from you is an example of a knowledge proposal that is handled by your system that is not obviously scientifc-based-on-repeatable-on-demand-experience and something that is not the kind of mythology you decry. Burt tells you the value of mythology is in its “meaning” and not in its factuality. Where in your essay do you try to handle the difference between “meaning” and “truth”?

Point 1 rests on both repeatable observation and analytical necessity.

Analytical necessity? Point to any chain terminating in “analytical necessity” and I will show you it starts with something that can be classed as “repeatable, on-demand experience”. Otherwise it is woo, and the “necessity” will come from its “meaning” and not from its empirical foundations.

If you claim “analytical necessity” outside of empirical evidence, so can the theists, and it is then only and always about privilege and exclusivity. You admit the priority of repeatable experience; exclusivity is a social category as well as a logical one. Don’t get your contexts confused.

Having a manifesto to prioritize knowledge claims is all well and good, but it serves the social aspect of exclusivity much more than the logical one. This means that social considerations are held in as high regard as on-demand repeatable experience. How repeatable is social consensus?

Keith, here is a description from The Greek Pursuit of Knowledge, Jacques Brunschwig & Geoffrey E.R. Lloyd (eds., 2003) Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. It describes Stoic psychology and the associated ethics. One point is the term “sin” used in this description is not really appropriate, “mistake” or “error” is better. The term “assent” involves things like allowing an impression to have a conditioning effect, or accepting it as conveying something correct.

This might not refer to our modern knowledge of neurology, but from a practical point, it is still pretty good.

“The soul is a mind or a reason. Its contents are impressions or thoughts, to which the mind gives assent or prefers to give assent. In giving assent to an impression, we espouse a belief. Desires are just beliefs of a certain kind, the product of our assent to a so-called impulsive impression. Since all that we do depends on our beliefs and, more especially, our desires, all we do ultimately depends on which impressions we give assent to. There are impressions one is justified in giving assent to, and there are impressions one is not justified in giving assent to. Hence, in the ultimate analysis, there is just one way in which we can err or sin, namely in giving assent to an impression that we are not justified in giving assent to. In this sense all sins are equal. What is so disastrous about them is always the same: they involve assent to an impression that might be false or even is false. But given the logical connection between all beliefs, any false belief, however insignificant it may seem, threatens to destroy the true beliefs incompatible with it that we already have, and thus our chance to become wise. Now, among the impulsive impressions people are prone to give unjustified assent to are those that evoke the so-called passions or affections of the soul, like anger or fear or lust. They all involve the false belief that something is a good or an evil that in fact is neither. On the Stoic view only wisdom or virtue is a good. Thus any passion involves a false belief that is incompatible with a fundamental truth of ethics the mastery of which constitutes a crucial part of wisdom. Therefore a philosophical concern for wisdom involves the eradication of all passions, and this obviously is not just a matter of rational argument. Philosophical wisdom involves an indifference to all things but wisdom and virtue. A corollary of this and of the thesis of the equality of all sins is that all we do requires the same kind of careful attention as to what is appropriate: our eating and drinking, our waking and sleeping, the way we dress, the way we talk. All that we do has got be done wisely.”

While only wisdom and virtue are “good,” and things that pervert or stand in the way of these are “bad” there were also a lot of “indifferent” things where a person could express “preferences.” E.g., health is preferred to sickness, wealth may be preferred to poverty, and so on, even though these are ultimately matters of indifference. (This morphs into a sufi story about a man who heard there were two sufi teachers in a particular city. He traveled there and went to the home of the first teacher only to find that it was a large mansion where the supposed teacher was in the middle of a lavish party. Turning away in disgust he sought out the home of the second teacher, which turned out to be a cardboard shack near the city dump. The man approached this second teacher and asked to become his student, remarking that he was glad to see that he had not fallen into debauchery as had the first teacher. The second teacher said: “You don’t understand, he is allowed wealth because he is immune to it, and I am allowed poverty because I am immune to that.”

One point is the term “sin” used in this description is not really appropriate, “mistake” or “error” is better. The term “assent” involves things like allowing an impression to have a conditioning effect, or accepting it as conveying something correct.

Burt, is there really any difference any more between philosophy and textual interpretation (hermeneutics)? Underneath an interpretation is a sort of logic, but textual interpretation is not limited to logic, since it is mostly semantic wibbling.

The text quoted above is a circular semantic wibble revolving around repeated use of the words belief, desire, assent, and justify. I think that it was clever for you to refer to it, since Keith’s essay is a similar attempt to obfuscate the business of knowing something. The problem between “belief” and “desire” is that the latter may lead to the former, but observation may also lead to belief. Only if you succeed in pulling the rug out from under observation can you really begin in earnest to obfuscate.

Anything can be “justified” at the end of a long enough argument. Even Nazism. You have to make observations in order to see what merit there is in the justification.

Think of it this way: I’m standing on the rug with cleats on. Be more circumspect in your rug-pulling, lest you get spiked. All you can do is slide the rug around on the floor, relativistically. I know you are engaging in rug-pulling because I detect that I am in an accelerated reference frame. We can’t lift up the rug and see what kind of wood the floor is made out of. After all, we are just organisms.

One point is the term “sin” used in this description is not really appropriate, “mistake” or “error” is better. The term “assent” involves things like allowing an impression to have a conditioning effect, or accepting it as conveying something correct.

Burt, is there really any difference any more between philosophy and textual interpretation (hermeneutics)? Underneath an interpretation is a sort of logic, but textual interpretation is not limited to logic, since it is mostly semantic wibbling.

The text quoted above is a circular semantic wibble revolving around repeated use of the words belief, desire, assent, and justify. I think that it was clever for you to refer to it, since Keith’s essay is a similar attempt to obfuscate the business of knowing something. The problem between “belief” and “desire” is that the latter may lead to the former, but observation may also lead to belief. Only if you succeed in pulling the rug out from under observation can you really begin in earnest to obfuscate.

Anything can be “justified” at the end of a long enough argument. Even Nazism. You have to make observations in order to see what merit there is in the justification.

Think of it this way: I’m standing on the rug with cleats on. Be more circumspect in your rug-pulling, lest you get spiked. All you can do is slide the rug around on the floor, relativistically. You can’t lift it up and see what kind of wood the floor is made out of. After all, you are just an organism.

They had to develop an understanding of what all those terms meant by observing them in their own experience. The message was: here is the theory, look at the way you react to impressions from the environment and see if it fits. Otherwise it is just talk and that was part of their downfall, lots of talking the talk, not so much walking the walk whether on carpets or no. (And, historically, that’s one of the factors that went into the popularity of Christianity—there you didn’t have to do all that work, just believe.)

Just make sure your cleats don’t get caught in the warp & woof of that carpet. Not trying to pull the carpet out, lifting it up and finding the key underneath.

I’m just back on internet after a couple of days hiatus. [Problem with the hotel’s connection to the outside world]. I’ll paste and post the answer that I wrote offline to this one of yours; then answer SC, then your present one.

burt - 15 January 2009 09:36 PM

keith - 15 January 2009 05:15 PM

I think we’re in almost 100% agreement here.

So tell me about the ‘almost’. What remaining reservations are preventing you from ‘renouncing truth and all it’s works’? I still want both you and SC. And with you onboard I could devote more attention to him.

Because I find the concept of truth, suitably qualified (e.g., in mathematics) to be valid. Also, I don’t think that all knowledge claims can be reduced to rational empiricism, at least as it is understood today. Going with Socrates (at least in Plato’s version) I think that whatever would pass for “truth” in a more metaphysical sense can’t be expressed in language, but can be experienced. As I see it, this points to a form of knowing that goes beyond rational empiricism (although based on personal experience) but which often cannot be taken beyond the personal. The theologian Robert Forward called this “knowing by identity,” that is, knowing a state by becoming identical with it. Having had an experience, non-conceptually, however, the tendency for people is to try and put it into some linguistic form thus limiting it and making it no longer “truth” (unless we’re talking about sudden flashes of illumination that can be tested by other methods). This means that whenever one has some sort of non-conceptual metaphysical type experience the first thing required is to test the realization arising from the experience against reason and empirical data. In cases where these tests can’t be carried out, it reduces to evaluation by effect on you. An example in this forum is Bruce Burleson, who at some point in his life had a personal experience which he interprets as an experience of Jesus. By putting a name on it, he confines himself to being a Christian (a delightful one, as it happens) and so has removed himself from the “truth” but retains a connection to it via the verbal linkage provided by the word “Jesus” as a pointer. So I can consider Bruce’s experience as valid—for him—because it appears to have produced beneficial effects in his life. That doesn’t make it valid for me, a point which Bruce, bless his heart, recognizes.

That being said, I do carry out many of the actions that you suggest, pointing out counter-examples to claims of absolute truth made in my presence (a habit I picked up from my dad), writing the occasional letter to newspapers, etc., emphasizing the importance of reason and experiment in my scientific reasoning course (rather than, as in most such courses, simply assuming it), and making relevant points in papers written for publication.

Burt

I understand your position, and I think that it will do some good. But unfortunately, against the overall trend that I can now see, I think that this good will be like the counter current of a brief vortex in a river. The river is the subject of Giles Keppel’s book ‘The Revenge of God’, and of our continued overpopulation and environmental degradation against the insight expressed in a friend’s recent email; that gods have always found their most fervent believers among those who they most abuse. [Simply and starkly, a negative feedback ‘death spiral’.] I think that reason has now been in retreat from its European Enlightenment high point for many generations, and that this can be seen to be accelerating. When I switch on a TV or pick up a magazine or look at a best-sellers list anywhere in the world I find virtually nothing but emotionally based religious magical and ideological thinking. Doubtless I should take David Bowie’s advice and ‘turn to face the change’. But in understanding from our past 7000 years where this particular change invariably ends up, and that this will have to be played out in its next round on a planet wide scale, I can only shudder. I think that from where we are now all variations of ‘business as usual’ – or indeed, anything less radical than the proposal for which I argue in ‘Truth?’ – will be cases of too little and too late. If events continue to unfold as I now anticipate then you may eventually decide that you are desperate enough to step through the strange mirror of ‘Popper’s inversion’ and join me. In such case, whenever it happens, you will be welcome.

I think that from where we are now all variations of ‘business as usual’ – or indeed, anything less radical than the proposal for which I argue in ‘Truth?’ – will be cases of too little and too late. If events continue to unfold as I now anticipate then you may eventually decide that you are desperate enough to step through the strange mirror of ‘Popper’s inversion’ and join me. In such case, whenever it happens, you will be welcome.

Keith, you obviously believe something fundamental, irreducible, and you show it here. The only reason I’m dissing your essay is because you yourself don’t seem able to follow its simple instructions. You wrote it, for pity’s sake.

You want other people to believe in your essay and “join” you. Who knows to what you might wish to oblige them later? Adoption of figures of speech indicating the party line? Perhaps all you want is for people to communicate the way you do, given that your personal opinion of your “Truth” essay is that it is “unbreakable”.

There’s nothing that people have brought to the universe, Keith, that has been elevated to significance by anyone but themselves.

I just ducked in to post this, only to find another of yours. You and Burt are vastly outstripping my own meager output. Please revert to arguing with each other.

Salt Creek - 16 January 2009 04:39 PM

keith - 11 January 2009 09:46 AM

The first entry position for ‘woo woo’ was at Level 3. My explained meaning, from presentation of these levels as hierarchical, was/is that I will not embrace from any lower level any proposal that I can see to be logically excluded by those that I’m holding from a higher level.

Well, when would you embrace it then, keith? All I need from you is an example of a knowledge proposal that is handled by your system that is not obviously scientifc-based-on-repeatable-on-demand-experience and something that is not the kind of mythology you decry.

How many do you want? I think that any of our reasonable and consensus historical proposals would serve; but I’ll go with “Caesar and his army crossed the Rubicon river in 49 BC”. This is obviously not scientific. I can’t demonstrate it through any physical observation. But it seems to me to qualify as knowledge (at Level 4 in my hierarchy) in that it is not logically excluded by any of my higher level knowledge, and is very much the kind of thing that I can picture Caesar – from all of the rest of my Level 4 accepted knowledge about him – doing.

Burt tells you the value of mythology is in its “meaning” and not in its factuality. Where in your essay do you try to handle the difference between “meaning” and “truth”?

In as far as I can understand Burt’s position on this, I think that we disagree. I’d say that the meaning of mythological proposals is almost infinitely subject to the esthetic preconceptions of their interpreters. I think that their value lies (A) in the insights that they can offer into our ancient limbic system based thought mode (our collective emotional biases and shared hopes and fears), and (B) their ability to still speak directly to these ancient levels in our minds and so mobilize their power to aid or oppose the designs of our new and definitively human thought mode, reason.

On the difference between ‘meaning’ and ‘truth’: I didn’t consider it in my essay because I wouldn’t have thought that there could be any confusion. To do so now: ‘Meaning’ is either that which we intend, by what we speak or write, or that which our listener/reader understands. [And as we all understand, these often fail to coincide.] ‘Truth’ is (if we are using it non-redundantly) an independent knowledge basis – or alternatively, the qualitatively better kind of knowledge that we can hold from this basis – in terms of which we can embrace as knowledge proposals that we can see to be controverted by those that we must embrace from our basis of on-demand-repeatable observation.

Point 1 rests on both repeatable observation and analytical necessity.

Analytical necessity? Point to any chain terminating in “analytical necessity” and I will show you it starts with something that can be classed as “repeatable, on-demand experience”. Otherwise it is woo, and the “necessity” will come from its “meaning” and not from its empirical foundations.

Well caught, and thanks. I cannot meaningfully, from my own position, separate these two ideas.

If you claim “analytical necessity” outside of empirical evidence, so can the theists, and it is then only and always about privilege and exclusivity. You admit the priority of repeatable experience; exclusivity is a social category as well as a logical one. Don’t get your contexts confused.

Agreed.

Having a manifesto to prioritize knowledge claims is all well and good, but it serves the social aspect of exclusivity much more than the logical one. This means that social considerations are held in as high regard as on-demand repeatable experience. How repeatable is social consensus?

‘Truth?’ is only peripherally about prioritizing knowledge claims. Centrally, it is about giving up our incoherent (but oh so emotionally appealing) independent basis for selection of claims as knowledge. In that ‘truth’ can be seen to be our only such alternative basis its elimination in any mind removes that mind’s barriers to working back through its entire edifice of knowledge to steadily increase its internal coherence and consistency. The elimination not only allows, but forces, reason to move out from its initial stronghold in the mind’s scientific knowledge to all other parts of the edifice. In that all human edifices seem to include (as in my Caesar example above) many proposals that cannot be embraced as science yet can be seen to be both desirable as knowledge and in no opposition to science, the mind will necessarily form some kind of linear hierarchy. I don’t include my own hierarchy in ‘Truth?’ as it doesn’t seem to be relevant. My object is not to persuade others who claim reason as their primary determinant for knowledge to adopt my hierarchy*. It is to request their help in eliminating that which we can see to be standing outside of, and in logical opposition to, all such hierarchies.

*Let them construct their own and then we’ll discuss it. Which reminds me, that I’m still awaiting yours.

I understand your position, and I think that it will do some good. But unfortunately, against the overall trend that I can now see, I think that this good will be like the counter current of a brief vortex in a river. The river is the subject of Giles Keppel’s book ‘The Revenge of God’, and of our continued overpopulation and environmental degradation against the insight expressed in a friend’s recent email; that gods have always found their most fervent believers among those who they most abuse. [Simply and starkly, a negative feedback ‘death spiral’.] I think that reason has now been in retreat from its European Enlightenment high point for many generations, and that this can be seen to be accelerating. When I switch on a TV or pick up a magazine or look at a best-sellers list anywhere in the world I find virtually nothing but emotionally based religious magical and ideological thinking. Doubtless I should take David Bowie’s advice and ‘turn to face the change’. But in understanding from our past 7000 years where this particular change invariably ends up, and that this will have to be played out in its next round on a planet wide scale, I can only shudder. I think that from where we are now all variations of ‘business as usual’ – or indeed, anything less radical than the proposal for which I argue in ‘Truth?’ – will be cases of too little and too late. If events continue to unfold as I now anticipate then you may eventually decide that you are desperate enough to step through the strange mirror of ‘Popper’s inversion’ and join me. In such case, whenever it happens, you will be welcome.

Best regards,

Keith

I’m a bit more optimistic than you are Keith. I think that we (meaning humanity) can pull it off, but it will take a while and some people will have to be dragged along kicking and screaming.

I understand your position, and I think that it will do some good. But unfortunately, against the overall trend that I can now see, I think that this good will be like the counter current of a brief vortex in a river. The river is the subject of Giles Keppel’s book ‘The Revenge of God’, and of our continued overpopulation and environmental degradation against the insight expressed in a friend’s recent email; that gods have always found their most fervent believers among those who they most abuse. [Simply and starkly, a negative feedback ‘death spiral’.] I think that reason has now been in retreat from its European Enlightenment high point for many generations, and that this can be seen to be accelerating. When I switch on a TV or pick up a magazine or look at a best-sellers list anywhere in the world I find virtually nothing but emotionally based religious magical and ideological thinking. Doubtless I should take David Bowie’s advice and ‘turn to face the change’. But in understanding from our past 7000 years where this particular change invariably ends up, and that this will have to be played out in its next round on a planet wide scale, I can only shudder. I think that from where we are now all variations of ‘business as usual’ – or indeed, anything less radical than the proposal for which I argue in ‘Truth?’ – will be cases of too little and too late. If events continue to unfold as I now anticipate then you may eventually decide that you are desperate enough to step through the strange mirror of ‘Popper’s inversion’ and join me. In such case, whenever it happens, you will be welcome.

Best regards,

Keith

Keith,

David Deutsch is a Popperian and has advanced Popper’s epistemology in his two books The Fabric of Reality and The Beginning of Infinite. In his second book, Deutsch explains that *all problems are soluble*. The problems you describe are a subset of the set of *all problems*. So that subset of problems is soluble too.

The problems you describe can be better understood through the lens of Meme Theory, which Deutsch explains in The Beginning of Infinite. Note that Deutsch didn’t speak specifically about wiping out religious evil. So I took Deutsch’s idea and applied it to the religion problem. Specifically I applied it with a focus on Islam. My article is below:

I also want to criticize your argument. Your argument is of the form: “I have studied history and noticed a trend in people’s choices. So I’ll call this trend a law. A law that is followed by people in the future too.” Your idea uses a philosophical mistake known as historicism (Popper coined the term). The reality is that historicism fails to consider the substantive difference between the future and the past, which is that the future has new (better) ideas that the past did not have. So people of the future will have new (better) ideas which they’ll use in their decision making that people of the past did not have.

I have been wandering the net for a few years now in search of my intellectual home. Basically; looking for the world’s most unequivocal and hard core group of atheists/rationalists. I’ve had a few hopeful initial contacts with various forums, and am still active on a couple of them, but in general I’ve found even the most ardent of my fellow antitheists to be uncomfortable with the idea of any straight and head-on intellectual confrontation with the theists. [With finally clearly demonstrating to them that their beliefs are false and should be abandoned]. Our pervasive understanding appears to be that (A) if the battle could possibly be won at this level then we would have done so hundreds – if not thousands – of years ago, and (B) that in any case nothing can now be ‘proved’ in any meaningful sense against the backdrop of our intellectually dominant post-structuralism/knowledge-relativism, and (C) that even if it could be, the theists would simply fall back on their ancient and widely accepted ‘faith’ escape clause. Our own faith in the insurmountability of these three problems seems to be strong enough to preclude even our serious consideration of any proposal that might claim to be able to circumvent or overcome them. I wish to offer exactly such a proposal. It can be found at http://www.poppersinversion.blogspot.com . I have, as implied, already been reworking if for the past few years in order to incorporate or address a lot of critical feedback. But the more I receive, the stronger I will be able to make it.